Fight or Flight: Core Beliefs and Addiction

Our brains have a natural tenancy to sort of justify our experience and our existence. I learned this when messing about with hypnosis. Ask a person that was hypnotized what happened and they’ll make a story up instantaneously without themselves even thinking or realizing it.

Some people do this after they are knocked (or chocked) out as well. Confused they’ll add a storyline in until they can figure out their bearings.

This is relevant to addicts and/or people with brain injuries. Their brains try to fire “normally” but something (effectively) random happens, and the brain has to compartmentalize or abstract the result and explain the conclusion to itself. This feedback process, I suspect, can utilize many different parts of the brain for different types of association.

There is something we should understand about this in regard to “core beliefs”.

We each have to justify our existence in some way at every moment, and for some people, especially in relation to propriety or the social norm, this can be a very difficult thing to do.

Addicts that are physically out of control to the point of crime etc. must tell themselves a story that fits and justifies what they are doing. They re-write their core beliefs and create different associative neural pathways.

When we confront an addict, or someone who’s brain doesn’t function correctly (brain injury), with reason and rationality, that is related to what is socially normal, but is not inline with their core beliefs, we cause them to initiate “fight or flight” programming (in other words when things get fucked up we get scared and fight or run).

This is normal with any of us. That we get insanely uncomfortable when some experience, something, or someone causes us to question our core beliefs.

Because this spurs such an emotional response, its also probably not a good approach to “help” someone.